On Becoming New Again

I started this blog draft about midnight the morning of January 31st, figuring I should give myself a few days to let my ideas settle in and then find time to revise the brief word tsunami.

New Year’s is my favorite holiday. Some wise people I know prefer Halloween (for the chance to be someone else for a night), but I like the feeling of being me and getting fresh and clean. Becoming new again.

This coming year is about striking balance. Nietzsche introduced the gods Apollo and Dionysus as the two figures whose opposed forces balanced each other out in the creation of art. Apollo as the principled god, whose uprightness is found in plasticity – such as in the work of sculpture and pottery. Dionysus exists past the “measured restraint” of Apollo, and is associated with the non-representative arts of poetry and music. To have aesthetic harmony and continuity, I take Nietzsche’s dualistic notion into a poststructuralist realm, always trying to both maintain Apollonian ethics while shattering past the restraints of plasticity in ways that are full of Dionysian revelry.

To quote Nietzsche on the value of philosophy (or seeking wisdom) in the new year:

“Philosophy, as I have hitherto understood and lived it, is a voluntary living in ice and high mountains – a seeking after everything strange and questionable in existence, all that has hitherto been excommunicated by morality.”